Unleash your inner child with Rebound Race

If you were like me and eagerly watched TV game show It’s a Knockout as a kid, wishing your family could go on and take part in the various fun challenges, then your chance may have just arrived.

I could not help but be intrigued in the past few weeks as I saw signs and posters start popping up around town advertising an inflatable obstacle course race headed our way.

I made contact with the organisers and Rebound Race director LianmBenson, who is based in Newcastle, told me it was in fact “the world’s biggest inflatable obstacle course” and encouraged people “who were told they were too big for the jumping castle” to take it on, with no judgement.

“Finally, here is my chance,” I thought as Liam described giant slides to scale and descend at speed, massive plastic balls to beat and told me there would be “water, foam, sliding and slipping”.

I have done obstacle course races before but your Stampede, Tough Mudder-style races where you plunge yourself into ice baths, subject yourself to electric shocks and swim, wade and crawl through mud.

I admit it was fun but the electric shock part scared me senseless but as Liam described Rebound Race to me all I could think of was a giant jumping castle meets a giant slip-and-slide.

And it sounds like a perfect excuse to me to get outdoors and to also get active. Yes, it might sound like a lot of fun, but in the process of taking on the 12 inflatable obstacles along the way, you also have to cover roughly four kilometres in distance.

So, I think you can also safely classify it as a fitness event.

It will be staged on November 27 through the parkland flanking McDonald Jones Stadium and is for anyone aged seven and up.

“The big thing with us is we’ve tried to make it for younger families,” Liam told me. “Most of your obstacle races are for 13 years and older, so with this one you can actually run with your family if you’re seven and you’ve got an adult with you.

“It’s fun for the whole family, anyone can come and enjoy this.

“It’s also for those people who were told they were too big for the jumping castle 20 years ago and they finally get a chance to hop back on.”

But there was no age limit on how old you can be.

“We had a person in Tamworth do it and he was 68 years old, so it is something that everyone can do, and you can take your time; there's no rush to finish it,” he said. “Most people will complete the course in an hour and a half if they are just strolling.”

There is an obstacle every 400m or so and they include the Ready Spready Go slide, which is 15m high and 85m long. And then there is Stairway To Heaven, at “about four storeys high”.

“It is about fitness but it is also about fun,” Liam said.

“There’s really a lot of value in finding an event that everyone can do and everyone can have fun doing.”